A recent report published in the journal Sustainability predicted that Britain could be close to food riots, partly caused by climate change-driven food shortages and food insecurity. Is the report alarmist or could these be the catalyst for social upheaval in Britain?
Internationally, in conjunction with other factors, food shortages linked to extreme weather events have played a significant role in triggering unrest, such as the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. Throughout history, widespread hunger, although not linked to global warming, has been a harbinger of revolutionary upheavals, including in world-shattering events like France in 1789 and Russia in 1917.
The evidence is now clear that global warming is reducing agricultural output. Rising ocean temperatures are cutting fish populations and the high carbon dioxide (CO2)levels linked to climate change are leading to falling crop yields. Agriculture is both a victim of global warming and is contributing to it, by deforestation increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, by emissions of greenhouse gases in livestock rearing and by using synthetic fertilisers.
The increased number and intensity of wildfires are destroying forests that are absorbers of CO2, and so accelerating warming. At the same time, they are destroying crops, potentially leading to food shortages. In the USA the greater intensity and frequency of hurricanes caused by global warming has impacted citrus fruit production, as it has in Brazil.
Heatwaves and droughts made worse by climate change reduced olive oil production by one third from 2021 to 2024, creating a global shortfall according to the Financial Times. China has also been hit; extreme rainfall cut rice yields by 8% between 1999 and 2012. Drought in Russia in 2010 caused a major reduction in crop output in one of the world’s biggest wheat exporters.
These are just a few examples of the impact of global warming on agricultural production. Climate-linked supply disruptions have pushed up prices. European food prices could go up by an estimated 30-50% by 2035 due to global warming. In 2022-2023 European food prices spiked to 19%, with climate change being a contributor to this, although the Ukraine war was the main driver.
The ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions began with food riots in Tunisia and quickly spread to the rest of the region. In Syria, the role played by global warming was particularly clear in the 2011 uprising that broke out against the Bashar al-Assad regime. In the years before 2011, there was a five-year drought which caused three-quarters of farms to fail and 85% of livestock to die (UN figures). As a result, 800,000 rural workers, looking to avoid starvation, were forced into the overcrowded towns and cities. They had to compete with the urban population for scarce food, resulting in a doubling of wheat prices between 2010 and 2011. The repression and incompetence of the Assad regime was the spark that ignited the tinderbox.
Shown by the increase in take-up of free school meals and the exploding demand for food banks, hunger is now widespread among the poorest and most vulnerable in Britain. Eighteen percent of households with children had experienced food insecurity in the previous month according to a recent report. However, so far this has not yet mainly been caused by climate change, rather by the workings of the capitalist market system forcing down real wages for the poor and not so poor, and internationally by wars disrupting food supplies and then pushing up prices, for example the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The present conflict in the Middle East will also feed through to food prices by putting up energy costs for farmers and agri-businesses.
Although not yet being the main driver of food scarcity in Britian, climate change is a significant factor and will, in the absence of decisive action on climate internationally, inevitably get bigger as global temperatures rise. UK-wide rainfall totals in July 2023 were 170% higher than the average levels for 1991-2020. Between September 2022 and February 2024 Britain had its wettest period and the second worst harvest on record, both linked to global warming, resulting in wheat output falling 20% in 2024.
Continuing austerity and global wars, added to ever more extreme weather events will inevitably make food scarcity and insecurity increasingly widespread. However, is the prediction of possible imminent food riots in the UK likely? The ruling class is taking the question seriously, various think tanks including the semi-official Chatham House are devoting significant time to it, and there are now large numbers of articles in academic journals on the issue.
The authors of the article in Sustainability outline various pathways creating conditions that could lead to food-related violence: cyber-attacks, major extreme weather events, and international conflicts. The extreme weather event scenario includes crop failure in the UK caused by floods and droughts and extreme heat killing large numbers of livestock, such as in 2022. Also, it could be difficult or impossible for crops to be harvested due to the effect of dangerously high temperatures on farm workers. This scenario could be combined with extreme weather in other countries compounding the problem by restricting food imports, particularly serious if major food exporters, like Russia or Brazil were hit.
The most likely trigger for food violence could be a combination of extreme climate effects and, for example, although not directly mentioned in the article, disruption linked to wars caused by imperialist aggression, particularly those involving the USA as it fights to maintain its dominant position. This, for example, could restrict or block off food trade routes. Class issues are also mentioned as triggers of unrest, such as workers and the poor not having the same access to food supplies as the wealthy in a crisis.
Interventions put forward in the academic press to address climate change effects affecting food shortages and food insecurity, range from the utopian to the apocalyptical. For example: “Consider how dignity, kindness and fairness can be brought into policymaking”. Or, “policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilisation less devastating and improve the prospects for our hunter-gatherer descendants”. It may seem easy to mock the latter, but many academic commentators seeing the complete failure of all international attempts to tackle global warming over decades and seeing no prospect in their eyes of any change, look to such desperate ‘solutions’. (In fact, the author of the last quote predicts up to 8-100C warming over pre-industrial levels, which could make even hunter-gathering impossible!)
It certainly cannot be ruled out that with widespread hunger and food insecurity, food riots could happen in the near future under the circumstances outlined here. However, such acts of desperation could not show a way out of the crisis. The workers’ movement must intervene to put a class and socialist position in order to channel the justified anger in the direction of real change. The 2022-2023 strike wave in which high food prices were a major factor, linked to the Ukraine war, showed how the food issue is now becoming a significant factor in domestic politics again.
The planet is more than able to make enough food to meet needs. It is the international capitalist market system, in particular its imperialist rivalries and wars and its refusal to seriously tackle global warming, that is creating food scarcity and insecurity. The prospect of global warming-linked food shortages leading to civil upheavals gives emphasis once again to how climate-related issues are becoming central to world politics.
Pete Dickenson